Somewhere in the snow. Drowned in the fog. Surrounded by trees all over, deep in the forest, obscured from daylight.
In contemplation...

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Darkness Revisited

This recent article from BBC News makes for an interesting read.Is 'darkness' truly the foremost characteristic of horror? The author seems to have a problem with this, though I do not really see him as making a well-rounded point anyway. 'Dark' movies like The Dark Knight owe their impressiveness because they are dark and gloomy - a natural, an intensely gritty theme and rather than slagging it off by dismissing it as a 'fashion accessory', I would much prefer to take it on board as it being a vital component of today's decadent society which is saturated by the stagnant light of dead-end, post-modern mentality, which I feel is best illustrated by the metaphor of one hopelessly but with a wisp of determination trying to punch someone in the face, while that same person is holding one's head and successfully keeping it at a safe distance, guaranteeing one's ultimate failure to inflict even the slightest injury.Fantasy, which is merely reality in disguise, is mediated by darkness and thus sprouts horror and suspense.

I feel that the author gets it right with the examples that he gives though. He cites Philip Larkin's haunting poem, Aubade, as 'really dark', darkness reincarnated in fact. This is where he hits the nail on the head because if you read Larkin's poem, the impending sense of doom is interspersed with chilling images of 'reality' and 'everydayness'. That is where the 'darkness' really comes into action - mixing the universal and inexorable, Death, with the seemingly mundane, 'earthly' objects and situations, all done in such a way as to change your perception of those precise objects of mundanness and ostensible insignificance. You'll thus see 'darkness' in those objects the next time you come across them, and THAT is what has the potential to truly haunt you. The fact that you are familiar with them also means that you would be able to visualize them more easily and vividly as you read the poem.

All those fantastical creatures, from jokers to cyclops to vampires - they're all scary and dark, yet I can't help but think: just as art works best when hidden, as Ovid would say, horror works best when earthly...

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.In time the curtain-edges will grow light.Till then I see what's really always there:Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,Making all thought impossible but howAnd where and when I shall myself die.Arid interrogation: yet the dreadOf dying, and being dead,Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.The mind blanks at the glare.Not in remorse-The good not done, the love not given, timeTorn off unused - nor wretchedly becauseAn only life can take so long to climbClear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;But at the total emptiness for ever,The sure extinction that we travel toAnd shall be lost in always. Not to be here,Not to be anywhere,And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraidNo trick dispels. Religion used to try,That vast, moth-eaten musical brocadeCreated to pretend we never die,And specious stuff that says No rational beingCan fear a thing it will not feel, not seeingThat this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,Nothing to love or link with,The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,A small, unfocused blur, a standing chillThat slows each impulse down to indecision.Most things may never happen: this one will,And realisation of it rages outIn furnace-fear when we are caught withoutPeople or drink. Courage is no good:It means not scaring others. Being braveLets no one off the grave.Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,Have always known, know that we can't escape,Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ringIn locked-up offices, and all the uncaringIntricate rented world begins to rouse.The sky is white as clay, with no sun.Work has to be done.Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

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About Me

‘What can I say? I’ve known him for one and a half years: he’s a morose sort of chap – gloomy, stand-offish and proud; recently (and for all I know not so recently, as well) he’s been over anxious, with a tendency to hypochondria. But sometimes it’s not hypochondria at all that he’s suffering from, he’s simply cold and unfeeling to the point of inhumanity, it’s really just as though there were two opposites alternating within him. He is sometimes unconscionably short on conversation! It’s all: “I’ve no time, stop bothering me”, yet he just lies there not doing anything. He doesn’t mock, yet it’s not because he doesn’t have enough wit, but rather as though he didn’t have enough time for such trivial matters. He doesn’t listen to what people say to say to him. He’s never interested in what everyone else is interested in at any given moment. He has fearfully high opinion of himself, and perhaps not entirely without justification.
Well, what else?...I think your arrival will have a most salutary effect on him.’
Fyodor Dostoevsky